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A July 23 Beijing News article reviews in detail recent discussion and debate over amendments to the Criminal Procedure Law (CPL). According to the article, the CPL amendment has been added to the National People’s Congress (NPC) legislative calendar. An NPC source quoted in the article reports that the Legal Affairs Committee of the NPC Standing Committee is still researching amendment issues and has not yet begun drafting the amendment proposal. The NPC has tentatively scheduled consideration of a draft CPL amendment proposal during 2006, with final passage slated for 2007. The article provides insights into problems that the drafters have already encountered in the amendment drafting process. As with the 1996 amendments, investigative agencies reportedly are resisting some proposed reforms that would enhance the rights of criminal suspects.

A July 23 Beijing News article reviews in detail recent discussion and debate over amendments to the Criminal Procedure Law (CPL). According to the article, the CPL amendment has been added to the National People’s Congress (NPC) legislative calendar. An NPC source quoted in the article reports that the Legal Affairs Committee of the NPC Standing Committee is still researching amendment issues and has not yet begun drafting the amendment proposal. The NPC has tentatively scheduled consideration of a draft CPL amendment proposal during 2006, with final passage slated for 2007. The article provides insights into problems that the drafters have already encountered in the amendment drafting process. As with the 1996 amendments, investigative agencies reportedly are resisting some proposed reforms that would enhance the rights of criminal suspects.

See below for a list of key issues related to China’s criminal procedure reform discussed in the Beijing News article.

Consensus on addressing the torture problem. There is reportedly a broad consensus among scholars and officials that strengthening legal protections to prevent torture must be a focus of the CPL amendment. The NPC Standing Committee reportedly conducted an inspection of CPL implementation in 2000 and found torture to be the most serious problem. The article also emphasizes that the recent revelation of several wrongful convictions involving coerced confessions has intensified the focus on the torture problem and made it the top CPL amendment issue. (For an English-language discussion of issues related to torture in China published in a recent issue of the Beijing Review, click here.)

Amendment scope. The article notes that the current CPL has only 225 articles, but that the Supreme People’s Court (SPC), Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP), Ministry of Public Security (MPS), and other entities have issued regulations and interpretations with more than 1400 articles, some of which conflict or undermine CPL provisions. It emphasizes that there are many loopholes in the current law that “urgently need” to be fixed, and that the CPL amendment is likely to add 200 articles to the law.

Amendment process. According to the article, the NPC Legal Affairs Committee is implementing an amendment process different from that adopted for the 1996 CPL amendment. In 1996, the SPC, SPP, MPS, Ministry of Justice, and other entities were asked to submit opinions before a draft proposal was compiled. These entities reportedly haggled over even minor issues that affected their power, resulting in lengthy delays. Reforms such as establishing an explicit presumption of innocence were also reportedly killed early in the process. To avoid these problems, the Committee will compile a draft amendment first and then request formal opinions from China’s legal institutions.

Status of local experiments on lawyer access. As noted in an earlier CECC posting, three police districts in Beijing, Gansu, and Henan launched a pilot project in May that allows criminal suspects to request the presence of an attorney or audio or videotaping during criminal interrogations. Although one prominent Chinese lawyer predicts that the right of lawyers to be present at interrogation will be written into the CPL, scholars with knowledge of the experimental programs indicate that there have been major disputes and it is too early to declare the program a success. Some public security agencies and procuratorates involved in the experiment reportedly feel that the presence of lawyers places too many constraints on their investigation work and are resisting the reform.

Exclusion of evidence and right to remain silent. Scholars involved in the CPL drafting process are pushing a provision that requires illegally obtained evidence to be excluded from Chinese trials. Some are also pushing for an explicit right to silence. Officials and scholars interviewed for the article suggest that because of China’s growing crime problem and emphasis on social stability, an explicit right to silence is not likely to be written into the revised CPL. However, one scholar suggests that it may be possible to add a provision stating that a suspect’s refusal to answer questions does not create an inference of guilt, which could achieve part of the same effect.